This is wonderful article. I like this. Just order mine the other day!!! I was like you too Marline, but I broke down!!! I’m excited for pistol, yoke & busted!!! So excited!!!!http://onlinesolution.info/?ca…
Had no idea you’d even heard of the Vicar of Dibley in the US! My all time favourite episode is The Handsome Stranger with Richard Armitage. Brilliant!
Question to ponder: Witness this picture of Carrot Top. Yes, I should apologize for asking you to LOOK directly AT the Carrot Top, so I shall: I am most humbly sorry. But I do have a question.
Examine his shoulders.
Was he perhaps drawn by Poser?
EDITED TO ADD:
If you were anyone, which you probably are but how would I know, you would be best to Fear Rinda Elliott.
Seriously. Fear her. Big time. Huge amounts of fear should be ladled like ice water on her doorstep. Because this woman has gone out in search of photographic proof that perhaps the Carrot Top By Poser pics on GFY were Photoshopped (AND Posered?! What is the world coming to with these ignominious suspicions?).
Alas, Ms. Elliott found pictorial proof that (a) the shoulders are real, (b) they are disturbing, (c) Carrot Top needs to pull up his pants, and (d) I can see his razor burn.
Don’t thank me. I can hear the screams of horror, and those are thanks enough.
The Manolo, he is the fan of The Hoff as much as The Smart Bitches. The Hoff, he is not without majesty.
Today, The Manolo noticed something that is completely true of Hoff’s Hoffobiography Don’t Hassel the Hoff: “one could open the book to any random page and find the incredibly entertaining anecdote.”
Behold, the entries for the Smart Bitches LOLurveâ„¢ contest, wherein our fabulous entrants crafted or appropriated an LOLCat for their book cover, and crafted their own letter of acceptance or rejection for their LOLCat Love Romance novel.
Please email your votes to both .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) and .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). Feel free to discuss in the comments, but votes cast in the comments section do not count! It’s like a Smart Bitch exit poll - maybe it’s accurate, maybe it’s not.
Voting ends at midnight, August 4th, Pacific US Time. Winner will be announced on Monday, August 6.
And behold: the entries!
EDITED TO ADD 8/3/07: Oops! Two entries didn’t make the completed synchronization between my inbox to Candy’s, so I’ve added them below. If the addition of No. 13 and No. 14 changes your vote, please feel free to email us your vote again. No worries.
EDITED TO ADD 8/4/07: Dammit! Missed one more. Check out Entry No. 15, bitches. - Candy
August 02, 2007 | Thursday at 4:02 pm | 22 Comments
Looking for some inspiration for a sex scene, or motivation for some boot-knockin’ erotica?
Look no further: Awesome Gal “V” has sent me a link to a great comment thread about reason why we have sex. According to an article in Mens Health there are 237 Reasons (officially! Note the capital “R”!) why we have sex. Jezebel.com opened it up and found about sixty - five million more from comments from readers - many revolving around a theme of “he” “was” and “in a band.”
Should you be seeking some spicy inspiration today, just remember - Bitches got your back.
August 01, 2007 | Wednesday at 9:57 pm | 28 Comments
You’d think we’d run out, but we never, never do, not when Lady Rhian, Lynne, and Josefina are on the job.
Sarah: Ahoy! The very first Zebra Regency gender-switcheroo cover! If you’ve ever wondered about those butt bows, they’re all code - the length of the bow tail is the length of the boy tail hiding underneath those long, long skirts.
Candy: I love the abstracted air on that guy’s face as he stares at her neck. Is he trying to check her neck to ensure she’s not some kind of Visitor? That chick does look weirdly smug and evil. Bet she eats live rats whole when he isn’t looking.
Or maybe he’s just wondering where she’s hiding the Aquanet because he’s all out, and god forbid his ‘do not be appropriately coiffed.
Sarah: El Señor de los Lobos ha matado la Reina del Terciopelo. And that man is no more a natural blonde than I am.
August 01, 2007 | Wednesday at 8:19 pm | 19 Comments
And get your polyester happy pants, all you much-maligned romance readers.
Ok, well, technically Gaffney’s books have been moved into that terribly-named subgenre known as “women’s fiction” - gosh, how I dislike that term - and it doesn’t sound from the description that Gaffney’s latest, Mad Dash, is a romance.
The review has a somewhat reserved tone of “This isn’t bad” from which I automatically recoil because it seems that type of condescension is regularly leveled at “women’s fiction” almost as much as it is at romance, which the Post wouldn’t even condescend to review in the first place. But I am likely reading too much into the tone and not enough into the positive terms of the review itself.
And really, a review in the Post? How cool is that? Way to go, Pat Gaffney!
(a) really poor potshot at romance readers…again. Oh how it makes me tired.
(b) really kind of good for Bronwyn Jameson, because damn, that’s some exposure.
(c) really fascinating (not) in the sense that yes, again, we have someone pointing out that Harlequin titles are beyond silly, and yet they are popular.
(d) really pitifully sexist because jeez, the stereotypical Harlequin/Silhouette reader jibe? That never gets old.
The deadline for our latest contest, LOLurveâ„¢, is midnight tonight, 1 August 2007, Pacific Time, so please, email your submissions to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) and .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) - fabulous letters of acceptance and rejection will be posted tomorrow. Because they are teh funney like damn.
Pan Jenoff, author of The Kommandant’s Girl wrote an article for BookSquare on the back-and-forth experience she and her book went through as it was prepared for sale. First, the title was changed, and it was given what she calls a very romantic cover and marketed as a romance. Then:
In the summer of 2006, my publisher informed me that feedback from key accounts indicated that they loved the story, but were not enthusiastic about the cover and title. The release date was set back six months, and the book was given its present, more literary cover, becoming The Kommandant’s Girl once more. Barnes and Noble featured it as a book club selection for April 2007 in the genre of historical fiction. Romance was dead, or so it seemed, until the Quill nomination revived the debate.
So after two years, two covers, two title changes and too many genres to count, I have to ask: Is there a difference?
Janoff’s ultimate diagnosis is that it doesn’t matter much, that “genre is a distinction without a difference, a line that has blurred to the point…
read more »
Kerry Allen left a most excellent comment in our discussion of promotional items:
Sometimes the thing you want people to see is buried away from the front page of the web site
If the thing you want people to see is buried away from the front page of the web site, you need to move it. Immediately.
Everything necessary to convince a reader she must have your most recent release should be on your home page. Cover, back cover copy, pub date, retail price, ISBN, review snippets, author blurbs, obvious READ THIS ENORMOUS EXCERPT link. Hell, make it easy to buy by providing links directly to its page at Amazon, B&N, Borders, and anyone else who sells the thing online in paper or e form. (Double hell, become affiliates with those sites and make an extra five cents or whatever off sales made through those links.)
Bury the “extras” away from the front page. Put the product front and center.
Amen, sister!
One topic I’ve been stalking from the perimeter is author web sites. In the age of WYSIWYG site building tools and templates galore, it’s relatively easy and therefore a requirement to have a…
read more »
If I had to write a compulsively honest personal ad for Throne of Jade, it’d go something like this:
Slightly awkward transitional book full of high seas adventure, political intrigue, derring-do, exotic locales and nascent musings on the nature of liberty, natural rights and sentience seeks geeky reader who squeals with glee at the thought of an alternate history of the Napoleonic war with dragons. I might not be as taut and compelling as my predecessor, but I promise to be compulsively readable just the same. Give me a chance to spend all night with you between the sheets. You won’t be sorry.
If you haven’t read His Majesty’s Dragon yet, I definitely do not recommend beginning the series with this book. It’s not so much a matter of lost backstory, as Novik does a decent job of catching you up on events, but that first book sets up a lot of essential detail in terms of how the Aerial Corps works, and the dragon-aviator bond. And for that matter, don’t read this review if you haven’t read the first book, for…
read more »
After the recent resurgence of a topic that’s nearly two years old - but never out of date because Candy’s entry on that topic of writers vs. reviewers is damntasticly and fabulous - I had a similar question: if you’re a writer of fiction, does it lessen your enjoyment of fiction when you read it? Can writers read and lose themselves in a book or do technical details distract from the enjoyment?
Reading with the intention to review has certainly altered the way I read, from the mechanical element wherein I mark pages or write notes to myself in the margin, to the thought process wherein I am constantly evaluating what is working and what isn’t. Suddenly I’m disappointed by a decision the character made - before reviewing, I’d probably think little of it, but now that I put myself to the task of explaining why I’m disappointed, I pay more attention to the narrative, and the skills used to develop it. But overall, I still dig romance and have a good old time reading it. Thank goodness!
But what happens when you cross the line from reading into crafting the read? Does writing decrease reading enjoyment? I suspect…
read more »
Let’s talk business, baby - it’s business time. But not that way. Seriously. I like ya’ll fine but, not in that way. I mean serious business - promotion. Putting swans and hats aside for a moment, what are your best tools for self-promotion?
I ask because after RWA and the Goody Room that was 90% bookmarks and 8% books from Dorchester (BIG OOOPS) and 2% Other Stuff, I got to thinking: what’s the best way to promote yourself with extras and goodies and random stuff?
Linnea Sinclair, at her publisher signing, told me that she’s the master of cheap or free promotion. Her secret (and I hope she’s not pissed that I give it away) is to wait for any opportunity for free postcards from VistaPrint. The postcards, cut in half, make for excellent bookmarks, and you can upload your own designs, with two bookmarks per card. So 50 free postcards yields 100 free bookmarks. Nice!
I’ve also seen mugs (though they weren’t giveaways, to be sure), candy and chocolate giveaways (which I appreciated a LOT), magnets, pens, and post-its. I’m such a sucker for post-its, it’s sad. Other promos that I have and continue to…
read more »
This week’s Friday Video is brought to you by the letters L, O, and L, and by Bitchery Reader Monica, who writes
HBO has a relatively new show called Flight of the Conchords which is hilarious, although admittedly unusual. It’s about two New Zealanders who come to America to try to make it big with their band. During the show, they’ll break out into song. This one is a classic that aired a couple of weeks ago.
In case looking at all the “Show It Technology” has you ready to get it on ‘till the break of dawn this weekend, here’s additional inspiration. It’s Business Time.
wrote an article for 
If I had to write a compulsively honest personal ad for Throne of Jade, it’d go something like this: